The following books are concerned directly and/or indirectly with the hearing of a voice or voices and/or the seeing of a vision or visions in the context of healing, spirituality, faith, divinity and/or creativity.

Hearing Voices: A Common Human Experience

John Watkins, Publisher: Michelle Anderson Publishing (1 Oct 2008)

ISBN-10: 0855723904; ISBN-13: 978-0855723903

Although hearing voices is often considered a hallmark of madness it is actually a rather common experience. While voices are a prominent symptom of psychotic disorders like schizophrenia they can, also, occur in many other contexts. Many well-adjusted individuals have had at least one memorable voice experience and some people have them regularly.

While some experiences are disturbing, others provide comfort, reassurance and guidance. Benign inner voices often occur in association with non-ordinary states of consciousness, mystical and paranormal phenomena, near-death experiences and shamanic practices and may serve as a vehicle for creative inspiration, extrasensory communication, the call of vocation and spiritual revelation.

In this challenging book, psychologist, Ivan Leudar traces voice-hearing and its interpretations through 2,800 years of history. Through six cases of historical and contemporary voice-hearers. Leudar assisted with some contributory chapters by psychiatrist Philip Thomas demonstrates how the direct experience has been changed from being a sign of virtue to being a sign of insanity, signaling ‘psychosis’ or ‘schizoprenia’.

Leudar asks the question if the experience should be taken out of the hands of psychiatry and rehabilitated as a normal, although uncommon human experience.

Listening to the Silences: In a world of hearing voices

Bringing help and hope to those with schizophrenia . If you hear voices, or care for someone who does, then this book is for you. For more than thirty years, I have experienced voices and physical presences that, with absolute certainty, I know are of spiritual origin. Do not be put off by ‘spiritual’, and don’t think that this is ‘religious’. It is not. While holding my own beliefs, I want to reach those of all religions or none.

Understanding the role of spiritual intrusion into mind and body may also bring enlightenment to those who suffer from paranoia, manic depression*, dominance, compulsion, eating disorders, addictions and multiple personality disorder*.(* Bi-polar and Dissociative Disorders, if you prefer.) It is meant also for carers and professionals in the world of mental health – and the curious: the curious who want ‘to know’: to know what it is like to be inside a completely ‘man-made’ depression, and to know what it is like to experience inner voices and presences.